Devil's Trap
by Indigo2831
Summary: Tag to "Citizen Fang" and "Swan Song." Both hurting, Sam and Dean haven't spoken in more than a week. When Sam takes on a hunt that turns out to be bigger than anything they'd ever faced, they may never see each other again. Angst, suspense and hurt/comfort, Benny and Cas abound. Please note the warnings.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi, everyone! I'm back with another story. This was actually supposed to be a semi-long one-shot posted before Christmas, but kind of grew into a life of its own. For me personally, it's just using SPN as a way to answer some pretty tough questions about what's happening in the world right now, questions that there really aren't answers to. **

**Please mind the warnings. This briefly story mentions the aftermath of a fictional school shooting. This is in no way meant to be offensive. **

**Please let me know what you think.**

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**Chapter 1**

The sunlight was a searing, cutting deterrent, that almost sent Sam retreating back into the motel room, after days of recluseness and alcohol.

But Winchesters were steadfastly stubborn, so Sam slid his aviators over his eyes and ventured into the town's thriving center, Dean's last word's the scorched earth of his betrayal throbbing with every step.

He'd spent the past four days in a purgatory of his own making, wondering if after Ruby and Lucifer and even their father's death, if he had deserved Dean's wraith or manipulations-the one that had dredged up the old pain of Jess's death and intensified the new loss of Amelia to Don. Even after days of mulling it over, of working it out in his head, of trying to rationalize Dean's behavior and resentment and tallying up just how awful and heartless Dean could be towards him, the pain was still there, bigger and stronger now that he'd given it life.

Homeless and family-less, Sam had to nurse himself through a raging hangover before he could even begin to contemplate his next steps. To hunt or not to hunt…

The coffee shop was more eclectic and homey than the thriving national chain, boasting big, overstuffed chairs, a warm fire and organic muffins.

The barista eyed his rumpled clothes and concealed eyes with a knowing smile. "Rough night?" She asked while tamping the beans for his three expresso shots that would go into his Triple Red-Eye. She smiled, her own cheeks dimpling in a way that was much cuter than Sam's.

Sam cleared his throat, absorbing her kindness like the dessert soil did a sudden rain. "Rough week," he admitted hoarsely.

Her face softened in genuine empathy, and Sam felt his eyes sting. She plucked a muffin out of case—the chocolate chip one Sam had been eyeing before he found less than $4 in his wallet-and offered to him. "Chocolate makes everything better. Take it, on the house...Merry Christmas…."

"Oh...wow, thank you. S-Sam, my name is Sam."

The woman with the cinnamon eyes and heart-shaped face lit up. "My sister's a Sam! Well, Samantha. She teaches art at the middle school down the road. I'm Willow."

Sam locked everything down and willed himself not to think of Dean.

_"Benny's never let me down, ever." _

And failed spectacularly.

"That's great!" he intoned a little too brightly. "I mean, that sounds like a cool job."

Willow nodded. "Probably pays a little better than glorified latte maker."

"Maybe," Sam agreed, "but you're the best part of most people's mornings."

She blushed, apparently victim of Sam's flirting. With the line of people growing behind him, Sam headed to one of the overstuffed armchairs by the fireplace. The muffin quelled his trembling hands and quieted the rumbling in his stomach; the coffee lessened the ache in his head; and the free wi-fi helped him occupy his whirring mind. After the morning rush, Willow joined him at the table for some harmless conversation, and the simple companionship eased the pain in his heart. Willow was nothing like Amelia and certainly not like Dean. She was young and idealistic. She still dreamed of traveling the world, of falling in love. She was passionate about everything from her hatred of barista-dom to her favorite movies and bands. Although she had her sister's artistic talent, she didn't have the same academic abilities, so she designed vintage-style tee-shirts while working her way through business school part-time. Sam listened and laughed and offered a bit of his own insights, relishing in talking about anything that didn't have to do with fraternal betrayal and demons and the end of the mankind.

Suddenly, it swept through the sparsely inhabited coffee shop. A buzz that was so chilling, he shivered. His head snapped up as the gasps turned to whispers and the whispers snowballed into outright panic. A man, gazing at the muted flat screen mounted above the evergreen-draped mantle dropped his cup and bolted out of the building and up the street, leaving an overturned chair, his wallet, and laptop in his wake. Sam watching him, noting the five ambulances, lights only, speeding off in the same direction.

Willow made a sound, some stricken amalgamation of a scream and a sob that curdled Sam's blood, and her face drained to white. "Sam," she gasped.

It took him a minute to realize that she wasn't speaking to him, but crying out for her sister. Sam followed her tear-filled gaze to the television, and he saw why people were panicking, fleeing, crying. Why they were leaving their possessions and running as if the sky was falling.

Because it was.

The local news had cut into daytime talk shows to with breaking news. The headline, "Mass Shooting At Madison Middle School," scrolled against the bottom of the screen in a distasteful red font.

The shaky footage of a man strolling from building to building, automatic weapons clearly visible, was even more grotesque.

"Car," Willow gasped. "Do you h-have a car?" She was shaking, and hand gripping his arm.

"I can get you to the school," Sam said.

They both stumbled out into the street that was flooded with panicking parents, all running towards the school. Behind him, he heard the screeching of tires, and the wail of a mother.

Having prevented the end of the world a few times, Sam was pretty useful in a crisis. He didn't even covertly hide the fact that he was stealing a car, tugging on the handles of the few on the street. A mini-van was miraculously open and he popped the locks. Willow climbed in and dropped her head in her hands, muttering desperate prayers.

A man with a tear-stained face wearing a bathrobe and one shoe climbed in without a word and motioned for an older woman clutching a picture of a little boy to do the same.

By the time Sam had reached the school, even his eyes were streaming from the outpouring of grief and terror and violence, and they'd picked up three more panicked parents. He followed Willow, catching snatches of details from swarming law enforcement and maudlin paramedics, who weren't preparing triage kits but unrolling body bags.

He waited with her for hours, knowing he wasn't really a comfort but unable to tear himself away. She hadn't let go of his arm since the coffee shop. The parents were all corralled in a windowless tent, one that kept the prying eyes of the media out, but seemed to exile all heat and sound. Sam draped his jacket around Willow's shoulders and tried not about what a community had lost that day. His chest ached as the law enforcement began calling out names, drawing the families away from the tent and into another. Sam dropped his head and waited for the screams.

Willow took the news far better than a poor father who'd collapsed. She held her head up high as a gravel-voiced police officer informed her that her sister had been cut down barricading the door to her classroom, a jolt whiplashed through her body so fierce that Sam felt it in his own gut and she cried harsh, loud agonizing sobs that Sam would never forget. And then she let go.

He strode away from the ugliness of it all, and wishing he knew where Dean was. The world wasn't ending, he reminded himself, but somehow it still felt like it was.

-SPN-

Sam climbed back into the bottle, only he went far deeper than he had before. Drinking until it felt like Johnny Walker Blue ran into his veins instead of blood. The snowy little town had that had cradled Sam during one of the lowest and loneliest points in his life with its holiday cheer, kind and generous people, had all but shutdown. Even the media kept a respectful distance. The Christmas lights were turned off. The stores were closed. The flags were at half-mast. A blizzard moved in a few days after, trapping Sam there with foot-high snows and shellacking of ice.

The snow filtered in through the cracked bathroom window, allowing much needed ventilation as Sam lurched over the toilet and vomited so violently his eyes streamed and his stomach burned. "Never again," he groaned, glaring at the empty bottles in the trash can.

After splashing his face with water, Sam stumbled out the bathroom, hissing as his bare feet shuffled against the motel's freezing cold floor. He crawled into the mattress and huddled under the blankets. The television fizzed with pixelated static when he turned it on—the reception was crap thanks to the storm. The only channel that worked was the news, and even the reporters appeared as emotionally wrecked as everyone else. He turned the volume down, and settled into the beds, trying to sleep. The storm was supposed to fizzle out by morning, and Sam's stolen junker might be able to make it out of this town, and away from the devastation so pervasive, it bled into his nightmares.

Willow's visceral sobs echoed into the quiet, and he turned up the television with an economy of movement, thinking about Dean's many demises, and knowing exactly what she was feeling.

Except, he was pretty sure Willow's sister and the children she died trying to protect, wouldn't be resurrected again and again.

As angry has he'd been, as real as their problems were, Sam didn't care. He wanted his brother.

He retrieved his charging cell phone, head in his hands, trying to not to think of dead children and Christmas presents that would go unopened, trying not to cry. His hands trembled as he scrolled down the contacts. His stared at Dean's name, remembering his treachery and manipulation. "Stop it, Sam," he muttered.

The only thing worse and more insurmountable than Winchester pride was Winchester stubbornness. He rubbed his face, warring with himself.

The room was illuminated by same video of the Madison Middle School shooter appeared again. The news had flogged the same thirteen seconds of footage. Sam had almost had it memorized, but yet he stalled his decision for a few moments to watch the most infamous man in America with two automatic weapons moving between buildings. The footage was grainy and shaky, taken from an iced-over security camera. But there was a disturbance in the film, a subtle flare of brightness near the gunman's head that last of a sliver of a second. It was how Sam had missed it. He focused as the news station played it again. The gunman took two steps and just as he entered the second building, and there was the flare again, just near the gunman's face, and in the middle of it, the eyes were beetle black.

"Son of a bitch!"

Sam's blood ran colder than the snowstorm raging outside and he was dizzy from the realization. One that he'd missed for two days because he was blindsided by his own selfish problems. He grabbed his phone, scrolling past Dean's name and made another call. As the phone rang, Sam dug some protein bars out and checked his stores of guns, holy water and rock salt.

He was going hunting.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks so much for all of the support. I was incredibly nervous to post this story, because of some of the touchy content. I'm glad to see it was received without a huge problem. **

**Warning: This story briefly touches on the aftermath of a fictional school shooting. This is for fiction only, and I don't mean to offend or hurt anyone.**

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**Chapter 2**

Dean tinkered under the Impala's hood, searching for something to fix.

The oil was nearly clean; the fluids full, the tires recently rotated; the battery brand new. Despite everything he'd neglected, Sam had taken damn good care of the car. Desperate, he headed inside and out of the blazing Arizona sun. Its interior smelled of Sam and a bit like dog. Dean grabbed an errant plastic sack and dove into the backseat, and collected some of the stray burger wrappers and crumpled napkins.

Wedged under the seat, he found Sam's journal, the trunk full of most of Sam's belongings. He'd barely had anything with him when he'd abandoned the hunt for Amelia. His stomach clenched with something tight and sour that resonated like guilt and stung like worry. Was sleeping? Was he starving? How upset was he? The past week had been an endless cycle of waking up instinctively seeking out his brother and feeling the same nasty pall of doom and solitude shroud him as he once again realized that he was gone.

He flopped back against the Impala's seat, exhausted from a night of restless, crappy sleep. He couldn't even find peace in his beloved Impala without Sam snoring behind him.

It had taken less than a day for Dean to understand just how much his brother's presence had kept him present and clear-headed. Without Sam to snark at or vent to, he'd found Purgatory taking over, anything from the glare of a slipstream trailer to the jingle of a car horn could yank him back to the proverbial coliseum.

His phone vibrated on his hip and his heart leapt wildly at the thought that maybe it was Sam, maybe they could fix this. The number was unknown, but Dean instantly knew who it was.

"Brotha. Gil's Tavern, Bakersfield, California."

Getting to the bar took a little under three hours. Dean strided through the dusty parking lot and inside the shadowed drive. It was surprisingly bright and quiet for a dive off on the outskirts of the city. A small set above the bar providing the only noise besides the clinking of ice hitting glasses.

"_The entire nation is still reeling after seventeen middle school students and three teachers were..." _

In Purgatory, it was all breakneck violence, constant vigilance and paranoia but as Dean lifted his fifth whiskey sour to his lips, he realized that it had made more sense than this earthly plane.

Purgatory, even though it had stripped him down to the barest of things, an animal that killed and tortured at the slightest provocation, the creatures he killed were only monsters. They weren't innocent children and the people who had dedicated their lives to educating them. Dean's stomach lurched in visceral sympathy even if the whiskey and the weight of the past week had twisted it into smoldering anger. He rubbed a callous hand over his stubbled chin, and beseeched the bartender for another drink and a channel change. "Can we, for the love of God, turn that off?"

The bartender regarded him with prickly disgust as if he was an escaped convict. So Dean tossed him a twenty and a dangerous smile and was watching football highlights a few seconds later.

"In all the bars in all the land, you had to come strollin' into mine, brotha."

The gravelly twang echoed behind him over the din of the country music, laughter and chatter. Dean turned around to fine Benny, his brother in battle, sitting casually in shadowed booth. He kicked out the chair in invitation and Dean slid in, smothering his joy at reunited with a friendly face.

"_Dude_," he growled.

Benny gulped from his glass of something red and viscous. "I know, brotha, I know."

"You were supposed to go deep, not vamp crazy Martin."

"That man hurt my Elizabeth. Dean, I tried with all the calamity of God, but I couldn't control it. It's fight or flight, and you and me always fight."

"What Martin did, Benny, I get why you reacted. But that just put you on every hunters' radar from here to Timbucktu—"

"And lemme guess that your precious Sammy is at the top of that very long list," Benny interjected. "I ain't worried about hunters, Dean. I've been dodgin' them since Eisenhauer. And what hunter would think to look for a vamp in sunny California?"

Dean crackled his knuckles and glanced away. So many emotions tornadoed through him, it was impossible to discern or process everything that had happened, and the sheer fact that they hadn't spoken since Sam had hung up on him a week ago. That Sam had dumped all of their phones and dropped off the grid as if he'd never existed.

"So Sam's not on your ass?"

Benny chuckled. "I'd smell that kid comin' a mile away, you know that."

"He's got ways around that."

"I hate to break it to you, but those hexbags and voodoo powders are jus' somethin' scared hunters dreamt up. Good vamps can smell those too. After Martin…I went deep like we'd planned. I haven't even checked on Elizabeth."

"She's on the mend, confused as hell though."

"I could always count on you, brotha," Benny's face grew wistful in a way that made Dean's chest hurt. As much as Benny had longed for his freedom, Dean knew that the one thing he liked about Purgatory was that his hunger for blood hadn't followed him down the rabbithole. It was a struggle for him now, one Dean knew from his short-lived romp as a vamp himself. "Remember all those nights in Purgatory when we'd huddle back-to-back in some dank, dark hole, always on guard, and you'd tell me stories about Sam. How whip smart he was and how he kept you sane while you were growin' up…after your daddy died. I'd be lyin' if I wasn't lookin' forward to meeting the kid." Benny began. "I appreciate you keepin' an eye on my kin, but now it's time for you go to find yours."

Dean sat back, challenged and a little angry. He wasn't sure when it had gotten so complex and painful and treacherous between him and Sam. Something traitorously told him it happened around the time he'd used Amelia as way to manipulate his little brother or maybe he'd just brought to light something that had always lingered there, that Dean was thrilled when Sam towed the line and followed orders, but lashed out the second he spoke his own mind and disagreed with him.

The music was cut and two uniformed police officers stood up on the bar, silencing the crowded bar. "I think we're all sickened by what happened back east. I've seen a lot of things in on my beat, and even a cop isn't prepared for something like this, something so...evil. The only way to combat such hatred is with...love. We're passing around a basket, so please look within yourself to donate whatever you can. The money will help with counseling for the kids and parents, to buy them toys for the upcoming holidays and future scholarships."

Even though Christmas was fast-approaching, the basket was nearly full by the time it reached Dean and Benny, but they added their stack of bills. Afterwards, there was a moment of silence. Dean stood still, watching as people bowed their heads, offered their love and money and prayers. People were crazy, but they were also generous and empathetic and self-sacrificing. For the first time in a long time, he knew why he fought and bled and died and suffered.

And he longed for the person who'd been at his side the entire time.

-SPN-

The once impressive interior of the luxury log cabin had been gutted—hand-woven rugs removed, Pottery Barn lamps packed away, custom-upholstered sofa cleared out. The only thing remained was a bold black Devil's Trap, nearly twenty-one feet in diameter, the gothic black chandelier suspended from ceiling and their reclaimed wood dinner table holding various containers of salt, weapons, hammers and gallons of holy water.

Sam hauled the shooter out of the dwindling storm and through the doors, ensuring the possessed man wouldn't weasel out of the devil's trapped head bag by twisting it taut like a noose. It was difficult to reconcile the heavily armed, uniformed man as hunters, but this time, the law was on their side in the form of State Trooper Saul Parkman and his wife Li. Sam offered his free hand to the state trooper Garth had hooked him up with. "He's locked in?" Sam asked, forgoing pretense. The bleak situation made it easier to dispense with niceties.

Saul was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man who looked like he was carved out of granite and just as tough, but he kicked the trussed up prisoner, chin trembling and eyes shining. "Yes." He managed as he gestured to the branded sigil on the man's forearm. He helped drag the prisoner into the middle of enormous devil's trap and lashed him to the cushioned dining chair with salt-crusted chains. "It worked just like you said. I gave him a holy water shower, the demon smoked out, right into the nearest body. We branded him in right after."

Li, the woman who'd offered him their dream home, made the holy water and procured the weapons, stepped forward, ignoring the bound murderer and looked at only Sam. Even though she was had a tiny frame and a slight height, she emanated fierce might that Sam tried to absorb. She ran her fingers through her short hair and looked up at him, tipping her head back. "We can stay, Sam, give you some back up. You don't have to do this alone."

Sam gripped her hand, touched by her generosity. The Parkman's weren't full-fledged hunters. They knew about spirits and demons, and often provided food, shelter and back-up, but had never trapped one and certainly never lit into one for information. Li's grief and maternal ferocity had pushed her this far and he wouldn't let it go further. "It's better this way, trust me. Head back to town with Saul. I'll try not to destroy your house too much."

She waved him off, but her response was truncated by the prisoner. "These are just things. I can get new stuff, Sam. Those children…"

"Don't listen to him, Li, we're gonna burn this mother down."

Li whirled, fist raised, and clocked him right in the face. Sam chuckled as she wailed on him again. He and Saul let her until the sobs began and the attack became more hysterical than purposeful. Sam hauled her back, shocked by her strength. "They were children, all children, you disgusting pile of shit!"

"Saul, this is why you have to go." He explained while Li cried against him.

Saul nodded and flung his own coat around his wife's shoulders, whispering to her as they left. "Call me if this gets hairy, Sam."

"Sure thing."

He waited until their SUV ambled down the snow-slicked driveway before he barred the door, and approached the prisoner, snatching the blood-stained head bag off to behold the mass murderer for the first time.

He smelled like death, and looked barely older than the children he'd killed.

This was bigger than him, bigger than this town and the magnitude of going it alone was overwhelming. Concealing how overwhelmed he was, Sam whistled at Li's handiwork. "She's got a decent right hook."

The demon, who was locked inside the fresh corpse of a junkie, gazed at him with intense, dark eyes, crossing his legs comfortably, lapping at his bloody nose. When it smiled, it was slow and deliberate and decadently evil. "Sam Winchester. I was hoping it was you who'd come for me."

"Don't make me blush, dude."

"My name is Zad."

His eyebrows climbed. "Zad? As in _Zadkiel_, the archangel?"

Zad was grinning now. "So you are as smart as I heard. I can tell you will be a great conversationalist. Pardon me if I'm not feeling overly chatty."

Sam rolled his eyes and stepped away from the table he was leaning against. "This will be a regular dance party."

"Oh, spooky." Zad trembled theatrically. "They talk about you, Sam, in the pit. You're a bit of a legend down there."

Sam was instantly sweating. He fiddled with the rows of shiny, foreboding instruments on the table. "When you fell with Lucifer and Michael in tow, the bowels of hell were illuminated; they glittered like the Heaven itself. And for one second, the pain and torture and murk stopped. To bring such beauty in a place like that…my dear Sam, I am honored to meet you."

Even after living with a year of demonic torture thanks to Lucifer camping out in his broken brain, the few clear memories he had of the cage were far worse. It was torture beyond description. The only thing he did remember in vivid Technicolor, that haunted his nightmares, was the never-ending descent through earth and rock, through sulfur and brimstone, and into the very knowledge that he would never be topside again. He braced himself against the table as his stomach lurched and his heart ached as he was assaulted by the memories of being stripped of his life and his body until he was nothing but vulnerable, ripe soul and an outlet for Lucifer and Michael's hatred. Vengeance welled up from places Sam had walled off a year ago, and he knew that he just might enjoy carving answers out of those demon.

"Your remaining time can either be painless or they can be the warm up for what's waiting for you below. It's up to you."

"I am an open book." He said leisurely. "Read me, Sam."

"Why did you slaughter those children at the middle school?"

"Children? What children?" He asked dumbly.

Sam advanced into the demon's trap, yanked Zad's head back by his long, greasy black hair and dumped a steady stream of salt down his throat, the flaky kind that would slice and burn like a thousand little knives on the way down. Bucking against his bonds, Zad gagged and choked on the stuff, nearly tipping the chair as he jogged his head to escape it. "You want me to stop?"

Retching, Zad rocked head forward, groaning. Sam snorted and continued on, pouring until the container was empty.

The demon was strong, Sam could feel its power thrumming uselessly within the wasted body of some poor teenager, but it was contained by the devil's trap. He stood back, watching Zad hork up a good pound of salt.

With his arms chained to the rungs of the chair behind his back, Zad craned his head to wipe his face on his sweat soaked shirt. He spat distastefully at Sam's feet, but seemed to recover more quickly than he would have expected.

"I suddenly find myself incredibly parched. Can I trouble you for some water? Evian, though, not holy."

Sam's hackles rose and he glared at the demon, set more on edge by his arrogance and the power that seemed to hover in the great room of the cabin like a nefarious fog. Instead of going for the gallons of holy water, Sam opted for the large bore syringes filled with a nasty combination of holy water, salt, silver ore—one of a thousand inventions from the mind of Bobby Singer.

He stabbed the needles deep into his neck and chest, and injected it fast. With other demons, they'd sizzled and seized and mewled like some rabid, suffering animal. Most demons broke, but the stronger ones held on out of sheer tenacity. Zad, however, hissed and wiggled a bit, coughing up a lungful of smoke. "It itches," he said with an air of annoyance.

The niggling foreboding that had taken ahold of him snowballed, and he somehow knew that this was far more complicated than a rogue demon with bloodlust. Sam jabbed in the last syringe right at the base of his skull with a determined growl. "I can do much better than that."

-SPN-

Cars whizzed by the black Chevy Impala parked sloppily on the side of the road. Its driver cursing angrily as he wheeled a tire from the depths of the trunk.

Dean had made it as far as West Colorado until the Impala rolled over a jagged piece of metal in the road. The popping off the tire had been so explosive, Dean, travelling well above the speed limit, had nearly careened off the road. Impatience with his inability to locate his brother had rendered Dean into a volatile, profane mess. He kicked at his car with the heel of his boot and didn't even regret it when he scuffed the pristine paint.

Sweating and sore, Dean gently lowered the car so it rested into its new tire and rolled the destroyed one out into the ditch. He tossed everything back into the trunk and scrubbed the grease off his fingers. It had taken him nearly an hour to change the tire. As he steered his car back onto the highway, driving a bit more slowly to test the new tire, his cell phone rang. Sam's last cell signal had bounced off a tower in central Illinois, so that's where he was headed.

"What?" he barked, steering the car with one hand.

"Simma down, Holmes. I'm just callin' to make sure you're okay." Garth shot back.

Dean rolled his eyes as he took an exit without signaling. With a couple buckets of caffeine, a pile of junk food and Metallica blaring, he'd be able to push all night. "I'm appreciate the concern, dude, I'm but I'm not even on a case right now. Don't you have a prophet to nag?"

"Nag? The kid is doing my taxes, and his mom makes a mean pot of Pho. I was ring-a-dingin' do see how the torture-fest went with the demon. I told Sam that Saul's a kick-ass helper monkey, ain't he?"

Dean nearly drove off the road for the second time in as many hours. His mind whirred with dread. "Sam…torture-fest, what the hell are you talkin' about? Garth, have you talked to my brother?"

Garth grew quiet for several long moments before answering. "You two are a matched set…I just figured…you were workin' with him."

"Working with him on what? Dude, I haven't talk to him in more than a week. Where is he?"

"The school shooting…I hooked up with a hunter-friendly lawman. They trapped the demon who offed all those kids. He said the demon's eyes flared in the video."

"_By himself_?!" Dean seethed. "No, no, no, Garth!"

"Uh, yeah, it seemed pretty cut-and-dry, dude. Trap black eyes. Get some answers. Gank the bastard."

"Yeah, except the fact that demon's eyes don't flare on video, you stupid son of a bitch!"

Garth was quiet for a long time. "If it's not a demon, then what the hell is it?"


	3. Chapter 3

Thanks so much for the support. I'm really proud of this story, so it's good to see that you all are enjoying it so much.

Here we go again! Please let me know what you think.

**Please mind the warnings. **

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**PART 3**

Dean Winchester's teeth hurt.

Twenty-three miles later, he realized it was due to grinding them out of anxiety. The Impala's engine growled as it gobbled up the freeway, giving Dean's futility soundtrack.

Sam was in real jeopardy, and Dean was 1,700 miles away. His baby was dependable, but it wasn't magic.

His phone rang, and Dean swiped it off the dash. "Sammy?" Blind hope bubbling forth even though he knew better.

"Hey, it's Saul, I'm a state trooper up here in Penn. Garth told me I should give you a ring. You're Sam's brother?"

"Uh, yeah, I am. Just what exactly did you drag my brother into? What kind of half-assed, mook hunter are you?"

"Calm down there, son. Sam had the case laid out when I met him. He laid it all out, and I gave him the supplies, including the house I built with my bare hands, to do it. He was gonna question the bastard, see if he was workin' a master plan and then sent that bitch to the darkness," Saul said. He took a shaky breath. "My wife…she wasn't handling this very well, so I took her to town to stay with a friend, and I'd planned to go back, offer a hand."

"So why haven't you?"

"We got a blizzard on Thursday, it was supposed to snow itself out a day go, but another one moved right in just as we left for town. I can't even get down main street let alone take on a narrow country road up a steep hill."

Dean almost drove off the road himself as he imagined Sam stuck in a strange place with whatever it was that had crawled out of hell's ass. He punched the dashboard, and sped up, the Impala's needles climbing into the red. There was a constant, cry of PLEASE in his head.

With resounding dread, Dean knew he would never make it.

"I know this is a shitty situation, sport, but your brother seemed to have it under control. Was definitely the smartest, capable hunters I ever laid eyes on. I'm sure he can hold out if it gets hairy," Saul said. "He planned for everything, Dean."

It sounded like an excuse to Dean's ears, like this state trooper was wrapping up this horror show of a hunt in a pretty bow to absolve himself of any guilt or responsibility.

"Dean," Saul said before he could light into him, "I'm gonna do everything I can to get to your brother. I put him in that house…with _that thing_ and I'm going to make it right."

And God help him, Dean believed him.

-SPN-

Fourteen straight hours of torture, and it was Sam who felt weak, queasy and even a little pained. Zad, on the other hand, was a bloody mess, but had barely given an inch. He'd tolerated the torture with gusto and maddening snark while Sam was flagging. Unlike Zad, he needed food and water and sleep.

The iron machete he'd been threatening him with clattered to the now disarrayed mess of blood-caked weapons, empty syringes and he leaned against it. He stared at all of the pile of weapons, reaching for the tiny bronze pig-sticker that used to be Bobby's. It was then that Zad felt chatty. "What makes you think there's some kind of master plan?" He asked, teeth twinged red from Sam's rapidfire punches.

"Demons don't do random." Sam said flippantly, studying his torn knuckles. The high-pitched drone that he'd started hearing around hour six was becoming shriller and more pronounced, piercing. "Even if the apocalypse is over, there's always someone bigger at the helm."

"There's more than one way to flay a cat. You of all people should know that."

The very notion threatened to knock Sam off his feet. But Zad was talking, so Sam white-knuckled it, even though his limbs were leaden burdens and his knees shook. "Elaborate."

"They had it all wrong with the prophecies and the special children and the centuries of elaborate planning. You only need some moxy, patience, and a few parlor tricks to get the job done." Zad slithered, nostrils flared.

Sam shook his throbbing head as the queasiness in his stomach graduated to full-on nausea and his muscles began to twitch, spasm. He knew with a baffling certainty that he was going to pass out.

"You don't look too good." Zad cooed from behind him.

Sam grunted, pressing the back of his hand to his sweaty forehead. He felt almost completely devoid of energy as if something was draining...

He whirled around and almost face-planted in the process. "You…"

"Parlor tricks, I told you. I'm bleeding you dry, Sam."

Sam struggled to speak, acid roiling in the back of his throat. He moved, trying to distance himself from the edge of the devil's trap.

"Mojo got your tongue? I can fill in the blanks for you. The kind of demon you're familiar with can't do this. And Sam, I've got moves you've never seen." Zad leaned back in his chair, balancing effortlessly on two legs as he stared at him with those inky black eyes.

They narrowed slightly, and the taxing pull he'd felt, and had mistakenly catalogued as fear, doubled and grew, threatening to swallow him whole. He lost time, lost his body, lost control and when some semblance of it returned, he was falling, plummeting over the plane of black paint. He landed with a thud and a flash of pain, sprawled on the floor, half-inside the giant devil's trap with Zad looking down at him as his muscles shivered and twitched erratically. "Payback's a bitch, Sam." He rocked forward to drive the table leg of Li's tufted dining room chair into his the vulnerable flesh of his forearm.

It was wide enough that it didn't snap Sam's arm outright, but he winched as his weight drove it deep into his arm, ripping the flesh in a maliciously slow glide. He tried to kick out, twist away, escape, but Zad had left him with an all-consuming weakness that was dragging him towards unconsciousness. Sam had no choice but to take it, feet scrabbling against the floor, blood painting his arm in crimson.

"Seems like you forgot how much fun torture could be." Zad bounced in the chair with vicious gusto, driving the leg further into Sam's arm with a resounding crack that pulled a sickening keen from the hunter.

If his arm wasn't broken before, it definitely was now.

Sweat licked down his back, and he concentrated, funneling adrenaline and anger and the compassion he felt for all of the grieving families into his body, combating Zad's mind meld. Somehow, his scrabbling feet planted on the floor and he reared and pushed as if he were deadlifting a boulder. Already off-balance, Zad's chair tipped over, smashed unyieldingly onto the hardwood. Groaning, Sam rolled over, cradling his mangled arm to his chest, ire overriding weakness. "I did 200 years in the cage, you're gonna have to do a lot better than that."

With a jolt, Zad's face was suddenly hovering an inch above his, as he stood freed from the chair, broken chains rattling like the death throes. Feral evil twisted his borrowed face in gruesome angles and he snarled like the monster he truly was. As the light bulbs crackled brighter until the bulbs exploded with a twinkling pop, showering them with a cutting rain, Sam swore he saw a flash of white-blue crackle in his dark eyes, something akin to the wicked white fires of the pit and the grace of fallen angels.

"Well, Sam,_ I was born there_."

That simple confession short-circuited the decades of training that had been jammed into his DNA, and a wild horror took over, paralyzing Sam more thoroughly than Zad's demonic powers. His heart galloped in his chest, sending blood rushing through his ears with the fervor of a tornado.

"Got your attention, huh?"

Sam scrambled back in a terrified attempt to escape, feet slipping on the broken glass and the salt-and-holy-water sludge that littered the floor. He'd lived centuries in the cage, barely survived the hallucinations afterwards all because of the knowledge that he would never be dragged down into the pit again, he'd never have to be lit into the with ferocity of Lucifer's unbridled evil or Michael's deranged grace. He'd never have to be toyed with, dissected, fondled without mercy ever again. He'd done his penance and therefore had been absolved.

The nausea he felt just moments before collapsing had nothing on the roiling sickness he experienced now. The only thing that kept him from retching was Zad kicking him with triumphant snarl. "That's right, Sam, I was forged from hatred and malevolence in a place where not even the King of Hell himself won't even dare venture—consider us a new breed, Black Eyes 2.0, an updated version of the demons you and your daddy hunted for decades. And we're _out because of you_."

A new version of demon, Sam thought surreally latching on to logic as everything spun into turmoil. It all made sense-his resistance to their old tricks, the power that demon's trap could barely contain. But a demon was still a demon, and there were inherent weaknesses. Zad, like other demons, they loved to monologue. So he spewed out facts, about how weary from a never-ending battle, Lucifer and Michael began working on a new creation, a little more grace, a little less sulfur, and after eons, their offspring began to make it topside, ferreting through the tiny chink that the rescue missions, first for shell and then his soul had created. "They united, two immortal enemies, over their hatred for you. So thank you, Samuel, for my conception, for _setting. us. free_." He punctuated each word with two random kicks and a stomp that bent bone.

Decisions had to be made as he floundered from the beating, concessions accepted. As much as Sam didn't want Zad risking escaping, if Sam didn't survive, no one would know about these shiny, impervious new demons. Beyond that, there was a fraying scream in every molecule and muscle, every rapid beat of his heart that he needed to get out of that house and away from Zadkiel. He had no weapons, nothing of consecrated metals but one thing he'd tucked deep into his pocket for reassurance and luck. Its edges were gauging him in the hip unpleasantly. Sam flailed a bit, shifted covertly to dig it out. He mounted a last-ditch attack with his last stores of energy. He whipped out Dean's amulet and dragged the jagged corners through the binding brand on Zad's arm.

Most demons weren't bothered by bronze, but it being one of the oldest elements on earth made it a potential weapon for the supernatural, like salt or silver. Zad gasped in the very pain and torment Sam had tried to coax out of him with the salt and holy water salt, and clutched as the skin began to pucker and melt.

Sam was spent, but still clear-headed enough to rattle off the strongest exorcism he knew, wobblily rising as he did so, "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…"

Zad raised his head, affronted, still clutching his damaged arm, his eyes were a humming with white-blue, and his entire body jolted, head snapping back with involuntary violence. As the demon was ripped from his body, he began chanting in Enochian.

A minute later, he was still, the exorcism failed.

Sam wouldn't give up; he merely switched gears, trying another powerful rite as Zad continued his rhythmic chant. The room didn't swirl with demonic wind, a supernatural fire didn't burst from the brick hearth, instead, telepathy launched Sam into the air like rocket, past the sculptural chandelier that twinkled, groaned and broke when he snagged on it on his descent. The dining table full of used weapons tipped over and cracked when Sam collided into it at a revolting angle, and he was unconscious before he hit the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

**I'm back and I'm officially a year older than I was last week! Thanks again for the support. :) **

**I didn't want to post on a day the show aired, but I know it'd be mean to wait another day. I don't want to keep anyone hanging. I also know that if I didn't post it, I'd keep fuzting with this chapter. As much as I love this story, I definitely hate this chapter. Read on and you'll see why. Please let me know what you think.**

**Again, please mind the rating and the warnings. **

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**Chapter 4**

Waking to a prickly numbness was never an encouraging sign, but this time, Sam had an ominous feeling that the alternative was far worse. His eyes sluggishly parted and he surveyed the damage through the fringe of his eyelashes. There was a serpentine trail of blood spreading from beneath his hip, trailing across the sigils and shards of glass. From his low position on the floor, he could tell that the Parkman's great room had been destroyed, remnants of the chandelier, dining room table, and glass were scattered across the floor.

He squeezed his eyes shut as his sensations returned-the muscles of his broken arm spasmed mightily; something stung low on his abdomen, his vision warbled and wafted, leaving him essentially blind in the lowlight, and more worryingly, his chest burned as if his lungs had been stuffed with hot embers. One downward shift of his eyes revealed why: one of the decorative bars from the Parkman's gothic chandelier protruded through his chest, its jagged edge gleamed gruesomely with blood.

Gobsmacked and petrified, Sam gasped, and the pain in his chest racheted up to merciless levels. To compensate, he breathed in shallow terse gasps, tears leaking out of his eyes.

Discovering the severity of the situation perversely seemed to energize him. He could track a little more. The house was still silent, save for the wind and snow still howling outside. Day was breaking. Where Zad was, Sam didn't know he couldn't remember if he'd finished the exorcism or how he'd become impaled—the last hours were a frenetic haze of escalating horror and grave miscalculations. He shifted, groaning through a tremor of pure agony that he couldn't breathe through or smother. He focused on the pretty floral curtains at the far window, and beneath it sat the black curved corner of his cell phone about nine feet away. _Nine feet_. He could do this. He'd done far more in far worse shape.

The first purposeful movements were excruciating, pain ripping through him like lightning. It was less than crawling, more like the slither of a half-frozen snake, but it was better than lying there. Just as his shoulders cleared the edge of the devil's trap, he moved his left elbow, and Sam cried out—a nasty, gurgling scream as his vision fuzzed out in acidic patches. Flagging on his side, sweating, he glanced down, past the four inches of metal protruding from his chest, and over the curve of his ribs, from there he could see the other end of the bar.

Reality and pain sank in, the roots of truth burrowing deep. His head thumped against the floor. Five feet away, and he just…couldn't anymore. He tasted blood and defeat in the back of his throat.

"I love the twilight," Zad's butter rich voice announced from a few feet away, and it hit Sam like fire on a raw nerve. Sam hated the dawn for the same reason. "It reminds me of home, of the beautiful, twisted misery there. In the cage, and all levels of hell, pain is everything. Pain is currency and celebration and leverage. Do you remember, Sam?" Zadkiel's voice was dangerously close, hovering somewhere near his side.

He did, but didn't bother wasting the breath to answer.

Zad continued unfettered, venturing closer with a measured stride telegraphed by the crunching of glass. "Pain is different topside, isn't it? It's more and less and everything, but there's also a finality to it, the knowledge that it'll soon be over, and for humans shackled to those messy emotions and fragile little bodies, that makes things _interesting_." He loomed over him, fingertips trailing over Sam's jaw and sweat-slicked neck in an intimate caress. And then, he gripped his shoulder, bunching the stained fabric of his shirt and lifting and jostling the rod that impaled him. Sam managed a truncated yelp as Zad dragged him, back into the devil's trap.

Head flopping back, Sam could only try to block out the pain by becoming fascinated by the patterns of his blood made across Li's beautiful lacquered floor. He hoped it wouldn't stain. Jagged shards of glass, wood and a needle from one of the used large bore syringes were jammed deeper into his injured hip and side. Zad maneuvered him so he was resting against the remains of the smashed table that had tumbled into the devil's trap.

He waved his arm again, and a white-blue fire blossomed in the fireplace, burning without food, and instantly the home was warmer, and Sam's quivering muscles loosened. Zad crouched down in front of him, eyeing the rod that was impaling him with gleeful curiosity. "I'll tell you everything you want to know, Sam, but it comes at a hefty price."

"Outta money…" Sam managed in a wrecked whisper.

"Try again, Sam."

"P-pain…"

"And suffering." Zad grinned treacherously. "This is the language I speak, Sam, and the only way I'm going to talk. Think of it as a reverse interrogation."

Sam gazed beyond Zad, at the beautifully carved door and the picturesque drifts of snow beyond it. Futility sank in like a heavy fog. He was trapped, vulnerable and in agony, at the hands of a madman, just like the cage. And all of those old scars, ones that had taken nearly two years to heal, bled more profusely than his impaled chest or his gauged arm.

Sam pinned Zad in a defiant stare, and nodded.

Zad rubbed his hands together excitedly. "You know I'm going to kill you afterward, right?"

The bar had punctured his lung, Sam knew from the tearing burn. He wasn't sure how long he could last with the ragged excuse for breathing. "Mhmm."

At first, it was maddening—Zad's enticed surveillance, the throbbing in his hip and the searing pain in his chest. Eventually, it became less about Zad and more about his body succumbing to shock and trauma. Zad spoke to him, marking his sluggish march towards death. "This could take days, Samuel," he cooed, brushed the damp hair off his forehead.

With one finger, Zad touched the end of the bar impaling Sam, and rocked it side to side in a subtle shift. The gentle movement unearthed depths of suffering Sam hadn't experienced since the pit. His toes curled in his shoes and he screamed, ragged and feral, until he was hacking up copper. And breathing became a near impossible chore than the base function.

Zad slouched down and made himself comfortable, head in Sam's lap. He batted at the bar like an inquisitive kitten and it rattled torment through his body like a tuning fork. "The chandelier broke the devil's trap. I'm free to go, but this, _Sammy_, is the best show in town."

"…go for…it…bblack eyes." Sam said, smirking.

For several beats Zad was still, contemplating, and then he rolled off of him and ventured over the perimeter of the broken devil's trap, and to the front door. He glanced back at Sam, opening it with a haughty grin. He lifted his foot to cross the threshold into the wintry white of fresh snow and there was a buzzing like a shock and Zad jumped back with a yelp.

Roaring with rage, and he tore through the house, checking the windows and doors. "What did you do?!"

"Guess ddevil's traps still work on 2.0 …" Sam said.

In a whir of untrackable movement, Zad pulled the bar from his chest in one ruthless tug. Sam felt it raked against his ribs, head arched, mouth opened in a soundless scream that burned like Dean's name on his tongue. He blacked out for a few glorious moments, only to awaken to Zad's sinister face. "You ruined everything I had planned."

The bar had tamponaded the wound; it hadn't bled that badly before, but he was leaking now, the warmth sluicing down his front and side. His broken left arm wouldn't move, his right wobbled lamely in his lap in an aborted attempt to lift it.

Zad resumed his vigil at Sam's side, the fire painting his face in an eerie light, and sat cross-legged and straight-backed, just watching like Sam's suffering was the most intriguing, engrossing movie ever made. Absorbing every whimper and hacked-off breath.

Panting descended into open-mouthed wheezing. Pain intensified to electric misery. Trembling escalated to teeth-chattering jags. Confusion withered to delirium, where Sam couldn't tell the oak walls of the rustic home from the rounded swells of the cage made out of bone and brimstone and brutality.

"You hurt so pretty, Sam," Someone cooed, touching his face and Sam swore it was Lucifer himself.

He recoiled from his touch, head rolling against the table. There was blood on his lips and a thundering in his ears. The pressure in his chest was unbearable, dragging him back every time he almost slipped away. After another crescendo of misery, he noticed that the beds of his nails were grayish-blue, and that he fought for hair, wiggling like a hooked fish.

Zad was standing how, warming his hands on the fire that effused the cabin in ethereal blue. Sam's world was wilted at the edges like an old photograph. He passed out, dropping off into the relief of unconsciousness, and he awoke to the crushing snap of a rib breaking, Zad's foot on his chest, the rod moving. "None of that."

So it continued.

He'd been hacking up blood for awhile now, much to Zad's delight, but the demon still wasn't talking. It was only when Sam began choking on it, blood dribbling out of his mouth with each choppy exhale, that he knelt down, cradling his face and thumbing the crimson off his mouth. It was disconcerting that a demon's hands were warm to Sam's chilled skin. It wouldn't be long now.

When Zad finally started talking, Sam could barely keep the words straight. "Humans are simple, stupid creatures, especially Americans with your fast food and reality television and materialism. Hypothetically, if there were some well-timed events—something that would make women clutch their pearls and men their rifles. These insipid, fragile little lemmings would exterminate themselves, so Michael and Lucifer said let there be…and we be-ed." Zad explained. "There are more like me, Sam. Demons hovering on the outskirts of society, plotting mayhem, random chaos that will strike fear in the hearts of mothers and sons and God-fearing people." He laughed. "We don't need Croatoan viruses or even a devil to take back the globe, we just need less humans to stop us. Violence begets violence. After my assault, gun sales skyrocketed, as did drug use, suicides and…"

"c-charitable do…nations, ppprayers…kindnn-ess." Sam grated out, wetness spilling over his bottom lip.

Zad looked insulted, disgusted as Sam interrupting him or disagreeing with him. "They left you in a house with a monster and never come back. They don't care, Sam."

Sam shifted his hand, raising his middle finger.

"They said you were stubborn, Sam, and it was a delicious understatement. You have mere minutes left, you're drowning, your own feeble body is killing you…where does it come from?"

_My brother_, Sam wanted to snap, but blood flooded his mouth, rushing up his throat. He gagged, dropping his head to let the blood drip out, and gravity clear his airway.

"As much as humans like to pretend that they're evolved, but at the end of the day, they will kill lest ye be killed. You're all just belly-to-the-ground beasts like everything else. My sleeper cells, brothers yours and mine, are just going to escalate the process…Jophiel, Chamuel, Remiel…"

The numbess he woke up to returned bookending this nightmarish hunt in detached horror. It was deeper, colder and more pervasive, the calm before the macabre storm. But it was better than the all-consuming coldness and thirst, the intense pain and even scarring violence of what were probably be Sam's last days. It was always going to end like this, alone and bleak and bloody. And Sam was so heartbreakingly happy that Dean wasn't there. With a wet crackle, his lungs seized, and he couldn't draw even the wheezing wisps of air he'd been coping with before. His eyes rolled back. The room around him, Zad's detailed plan, dissolved in a gleam of oily red.

With a last act of defiance, Sam Winchester prayed.

-SPN-

Dean willed the gas pump to go faster. As the old Iowan pumps clicked and wheezed gas into his beloved baby, he paced around the car, eyes trained on the grainy footage playing on his cell phone. He'd paused the video at the precise moment, frowning at what Sam must have mistaken for black eyes. They were almost molten silver at the center, not like a shifter, a vamprie, a siren, or even a person possessed by a ghost. Dean had never seen anything like it, not the pixelated crackles by his face, the streaking of the eyes. He'd never seen anything like it. Dean bounced on his heels to burn off some of the tension and distract him from the voice that spoke to how bad this was. A shifter Sammy could take care of-the kid adapted faster than any hunter Dean had met—but how could you kill something if you don't even know what it was? A second before Dean was about to beat the fuel out of the antique gas pump, there was a snap of a trenchcoat and a hearty chuff of air. Dean whirled around, hours of anxiety bubbling forth. "I'm goin' crazy here…have you-"

Castiel's face was etched in a grimness that was rare for the even-keeled angel, his glittering blue eyes downcast, and his trenchcoat was stained with something dark. _Blood. _

"Dean, you must come." Castiel announced. "It's Sam."

_Sam's blood._

Dean ran forward, gripping his hand, waiting for the stomach-roiling dizziness of teleportation. "Cas! Fingers on forehead, let's go."

He bored deep into Dean's eyes, fingers twisting into Dean's, his grip tight and foreboding. "You need to prepare yourself."

"For the trip? It ain't my first time at the rodeo. I'll eat a bran muffin."

"No, for what you may find."

With a rustle of wind, they were gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Sorry about the delay! This chapter took a bit more research than I was originally intended, and I went out of town to celebrate my birthday. There will be one more chapter after this one. Please let me know what you think. And thanks again for all of the feedback! **

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**Chapter 5**

The soles of his boots slipped on the ice and salt, and Dean flailed before dropping gracelessly to the icy snow below. He crouched for a long moment as he waited for his stomach to unstick itself from the where it was wedged high in its throat. He shivered in the same short sleeve tee-shirt he'd changed into at a rest stop in Texas. He coughed, breath silvering in the night air and turned around to gain his bearings in the darkness of a flat open space. The lights of the medium-sized brick hospital gleamed across a barren, slush-covered boulevard, and there was an ambulance pulling into the bay. Through the striping snow, Dean ran across the street not even bothering to check for cars. As he moved past the parking lot, the Impala dropped with a resounding clang into an abandoned space, rocking on its new shocks from the impact. Dean jumped, glaring into the ether. "I'm gonna kick your ass, Cas!"

He bolted into the hospital, following the gurney the paramedics had unloaded. He craned his head, trying to see into the negative space of the EMTs and approaching hospital staff, but he could only make out the fuzzy gray of warming blankets and a knee moving restlessly beneath them. Instead, he studied the demeanor of the caretakers. They seemed efficient but not frenzied, the younger one took the time to crack a joke with the hot doctor and there was movement on the gurney below-all good signs. He followed them past the trauma rooms and into a treatment room, arms crossed, waiting. When the EMTs finally stepped aside to reveal the patient on the gurney, Dean's shoulders dropped, stomach sinking, as the damaged face of a teenage girl was revealed, the red and gold of her cheerleading uniform poking out of the protective blankets.

He stumbled back and into panic. Where was Sam?! The only thing he could do was head back to the reservation desk and prod them for information. He headed down the hallway, past the trauma room containing swarms of masked doctors and unspoken capitulation.

And backed up.

He stared not at the physicians working feverishly on a patient, but at the bag of personal belongings that had been tossed in the corner. If Sam's size 14 boots didn't bring vomit rushing its way up his throat, the hideous Superman belt buckle did. He'd bought it at rest stop years ago as a joke, and Sam had loved it so much he never took it off, not even when a witch spewing some kind of nasty goop had stained half of it purple and green.

Without warning, the gurney was careening through the doors and Dean ambled out of the way. The glimpse he'd of his brother was one he would never forget: Sam was completely out, a nurse breathing for him with a manual ambu, his skin was a deep, dappled gray almost like that of exsanguinated corpses. There was a woman straddling him on the gurney, her gloved hand disappearing inside his chest cavity. The rest of him had been haphazardly covered, but Dean had seen the damage, the mangled, bloody arm, the black bruises on his hip and thigh, the limp deadness of his body. He was devoid of everything that made Sam Sammy, the spirit, the life, the spark.

It was Sam barely alive.

Dean let them pass, not wanting to delay Sam getting the help that he needed. He turned around back at the empty room that had been demolished by the fervor of their work, the floor littered with empty blood bag and wrappers and tubes and soiled bandages. He saw half of Sam's shirt, the entire bit of it crusted with blood.

Whatever Sam had gone through, it had been worse than even his sick imagination could dream up.

Someone stepped inside the door, and cleared their throat. Dean stood, slack-jawed at the man who filled up the door way and nearly blotted out the harsh overhead lighting. He ran his hand over his shaved head hair, the hairs beneath it gray and prickly stood straight out. He held the rim of his state trooper hat respectively, and refused to meet Dean's eyes. "Saul," Dean gritted out, muscles coiling, fists ready to strike.

He looked up and nodded, chin trembling. "I'm so sorry…I never thought that…" his shoulders shook and he wiped at his eyes, overloaded with guilt and regret. "I…I failed him. I know that. You can take a swig at me. I deserve it."

Dean ached to do just that, but there was something about this town and the downtrodden feel that clung to everything that stopped him. He glanced at that belt buckle, remembering Sam accepting it with a dimpled grin, tucking his shirt in just so it was visible, and let it all go. There had been enough bloodshed. He clapped Saul on the shoulder and ushered him out of the room. "Sam's been through worse than this, and laughed it off. He's gonna be fine. Just watch."

For Dean, there was no other option.

-SPN-

Dean knew by the way the staff treated him that they didn't think Sam would live through the night.

They plied him with soothing tea, instead of energizing coffee. Their gazes never went higher than his chin. They used more medical jargon and boilerplate like "extraordinary measures" and random percentages to quantify both the severity his condition and the chances of survival.

They allowed him to see Sam less than an half-an-hour after surgery. Dean adjusted the protective gown and gloves as the doctor walked him back to a ward that was loud, not from the harried interactions of medical staff, but from the chuffing of respirators and clicking and buzzing of machines. Somehow Sam looked both better and worse. While color had drastically improved from an alarming gray, with blue at the lips, to a chalky-white with a few spots of color in his cheeks from his rising, post-op fever, there was still the respirator jammed down his throat, two small chest tubes in his left chest and his body shuddered lightly in manufactured breaths. The mess of an arm Dean had seen before had been set in a heavy cast.

There was something anvilous sitting on his chest, crushing the air out of his lungs as he looked his baby brother, unresponsive and closer to death than life. He chanced the barest of touches to the crown of his head, hating himself because they last time they spoke, it was with nastiness and anger; because he was so gnarled from Purgatory, that all he could do was fight; because Sam had done what he'd always did to get back to the Winchester good graces-something colossal and selfless and dangerous-and Dean _hadn't been there_.

The only thing holding him together was the knowledge that he had an angel in his back pocket, who would heal him as soon as he returned from wherever Sam had sent him.

The doctor touched his arm, a firm pat above the elbow, to remind Dean that she was there. "His broken pelvis will heal on its own, as we discussed, the fracture was minimal. The arm break was pretty severe, he'll probably he'll need at least one more surgery to remove the pins, but he should regain ninety to 100 percent of use. The main concern is the damage to his lung and heart. It...it looks like he was impaled on his left side...by something cylindrical, and it nicked the pericardium and punctured his left lung."

Grimacing, Dean tasted bile.

"He was severely hypovolemic when he arrived and his heart did stop during surgery for more than a minute. We have transfused him and repaired the damage to his lung and heart. I can't stress this enough, Mr. Singer, the next twelve hours to twenty-four hours will be extremely telling about Sam's..."

As he listened, Dean's hand slid into Sam's, fingertips brushing over a cool but familiar shape, and he yanked it back as if he'd been burned. Heart pounding, turned Sam's hand over gently by the wrist. There, wrapped around his wrist like some kind of supernatural rosary was his amulet. The one Sam had given him when they were kids, Cas had taken to find God, and he'd thrown away in a motel room a lifetime ago

Dr. Nali paused, genuine concern leeching into her stoic monotone. "He was clutching that when he came in. The nurses wanted to make sure he had it with him. It seemed to be important to him."

"It's mine." He whispered around the lump in his throat.

"We were thinking it belonged to the trench-coated man who brought him in and then seemed to vanish into thin air."

The doctor's voice became an unimportant echo compared to the emotion that wailed inside of him like a hurricane pounding the shore. Without a word, Dean turned and left the ICU and shuffled to the nearest bathroom knowing he'd be sick. After almost hating his brother for how selfish and indifferent he'd become, after driving thousands of miles into every worsening despair, after waiting and pacing while Sam was in surgery, Dean was ready to purge it all. He leaned over the toilet, stomaching roiling, but nothing came out except a few ragged exhales, even though a crushing pressure was building, rumbling up so that he felt an intense ache from the tips of his fingers to the backs of his eyes. He dropped to his knees in the stall, desperate for a reprieve. When it felt like his head would explode, something shattered inside of him, and he wasn't sure if he was laughing or crying or hyperventilating. It wasn't the fallout he'd expected, but he was self-destructing all the same.

-SPN-

After those first precarious twenty hours, there was never a question if Sam was going to live; he was.

And that's when it got complicated.

His heart would keep beating, his hair growing, his injuries would even heal, but his brain had been deprived of oxygen and could be damaged. The doctors spoke of impaired motor function, memory loss, muscle damage, speech impairment. Essentially everything that made Sam _Sammy_ could no longer exist when he woke up.

Dean leaned back in his chair, shrouded in a brittle shock that seemed to cushion the words of Sam's doctor.

He glanced up, ready to ask a question or for a bucket he could throw up in, but Dr. Nali, a fancy cardiothoracic surgeon on loan from Pittsburgh, had left the tiny alcove in the same hurried walk-run all doctors had adapted at some point in their training.

Dean was only built to understand black and white. Monsters are evil, so you kill them. Pie is awesome, so you eat as much of it as you can. It was the gray uncertainty that drove him insane, twisted him up inside.

But he was pretty sure that Sam living as a gorked out squash, his muscles atrophying, his giant geek brain turning to mush, was worse than death.

His eyes stung as he cracked his knuckles and shifted in the hard plastic chair that provided no comfort.

A cup of coffee appeared in front of his face and he took it without looking up, knowing it was his newfound shadow, Saul. "Got anything stronger?" Dean asked wearily.

"You haven't slept in two days. One speck of liquor's gonna drop you like a sandbag. You look like crap, sport."

"You must know some dogs that shit diamonds then."

Saul chuckled and it was just as Dean would have expected it to sound, gravelly and hoarse, like pebbles in a tin can. Saul pressed something cool and smooth into his hand. It took Dean a full minute of staring at it to figure out that it was a room key. "Li got you a room at the motel down the street. It's nothin' fancy, but it's close to the hospital. Go get some sleep. Sam's gonna need you rested, right?"

For as menacing as Saul looked with the uniform and the buzzed hair and the hard-angled face, he was a bit of softie. He talked about Sam fondly, like he was a godson, not some stranger he'd known for a few days. When he wasn't working, he was at the hospital, keeping Dean company. When he was on-duty, it was Li who tried to force feed him food and affection. Dean was pretty sure she was knitting him a sweater, too. But with everyone else dead and gone, and memories of Bobby's too fresh death haunting him with every smell and sound of the hospital, he was grateful for the companionship. Even when they kicked him in the ass.

"I'm pretty sure brussel sprouts don't need babysitting." Dean muttered.

"Hey!" Saul barked in a tone that was eerily familiar to John Winchester's, slamming his first against a nearby table. "Watch your mouth, slick. You've been here for nearly three days, so I'm ignorin' your attitude, but I can't ignore your stank." He tugged Dean out of his chair by his collar and gently shoved him towards the exit. "If I see you in this hospital again before sun up, I'm arrestin' you."

"Saul..."

"You wanna test me?" He challenged.

Dean backed down, not having the will to fight anymore.

He headed down the hall, watching the ebb and flow of the nurses as he did. Stephanie, a nosy brunette, who was a stickler on visitation times, flitted around a corner. Seizing the opportunity, he ducked inside Sam's room, where the lights were turned low and it was only illuminated by a few colored lights on his monitors and the glow from the nurse's station. Dean moved to his bedside and brushed Sam's hair back, wondering how the nurses kept it so clean with the electrodes liming his forehead. His baby brother was gaunt beneath a dark smattering of facial hair, his lips bloodless and cracked. "Hey, Sammy." Dean said softly. "I'm gonna step out for a bit, get some air, but I'll be back soon."

Despite the his bruised eyelids, horrible complexion and tubes jammed down his throat, in his chest, and casted arm, Sam looked...peaceful. It dawned on Dean that Sam hadn't been to a real hospital in years. He recuperated in grimy panic rooms, the cramped back seat of the Impala, Rufus's one-room cabin or Bobby's musty couch that was at least a foot too short. "Enjoying the nice lookin' after, huh?"

The amulet still adorned Sam's hand, gleaming in the errant light. His throat burned and he lowered the railing gently, pressing his forehead against his brother's shoulder. It was all wrong, Sam's smell, the jerky, mechanical way he breathed, the paper thinness of his too-hot skin, and Dean loathed it. "You know how much I hate vegetables, right? Please, Sammy, I don't even have the right to-just hang on a little while longer. It can't...We can't end like this."

He left the Impala at the hospital, and walked in the arctic cold. The icy wind chaffed and burned his face and knotted his hands. By the time he reached the motel, Dean was thoroughly frozen and barely on his feet. As soon as the door was closed, he slid down it, face in his hands. He didn't have the strength to walk the four feet to the bed or the two to the shower. Depleted, he just sat.

Until he remembered what he never should have forgotten.

"CASTIEL!" Dean bellowed. "CAS! Wing your ass down here, you gotta brother to heal!"

It took more than two hours of bleating profane prayers for the angel to arrive.

Just when he thought that Sam's life was saved and something would finally go right, it descended into new, cavernous depths of wrong.

The angel's eyes were wide, his now stain and torn trenchcoat hung off one shoulder like a forlorn cape. Dean struggled to his feet, swaying a bit, but not as badly as Castiel was. There was a thunderous crack and the light bulbs popped, but even in the darkness, Dean saw Castiel's wings, pressed against the far wall and ceiling of the motel room. Castiel looked crazed, and not courting-the-honeybees-kooky, but dangerously deranged.

"I should not be here," the angel announced. "You should not have called me."

"I can't think of anywhere else you should be. Answers, Cas! Now. Sam's in bad shape." The walls were rumbling, the mirror in the bathroom cracked with resounding pop. But Dean didn't care if the entire motel crumbled around them; he needed something. This was Sam's last hope.

It took Dean several moments to figure out that the funneling glow in the room stemmed from Castiel's disjointed grace.

"I will tell you quickly, and then I have to seek safety. Do not interrupt me," Cas warned. "There were rumors...in Heaven and beyond...that Michael and Lucifer had stopped warring, and had united to breed a new kind of being, one of light and dark." The streetlights outside flickered and a tremor of power ran through Castiel. "There were no signs, no waves suggesting such creatures existed. But we were wrong, and their spawn have escaped the cage."

Dean reeled, heart clamoring against his chest.

"What Sam encountered, what he battled, was an _Archdemon_-a creature with demonic roots intertwined with the grace of Heaven." His face broke in an expression of pain.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Sam prayed to me, relying the demon's true plans. When I arrived, I got Sam to safety, and I have been warring with them ever since. They cursed me. _ In Enochian_." Castiel's wings appeared again, burning a malicious midnight blue. "I must to seek exile to the desert until I regain control."

"Sam's not going to make it that long. Castiel, you gotta fix him." He clutched at the lapels of his trenchcoat. "Look I'll help you...with this...and-"

Searing white erupted from Castiel's eyes and mouth, burning hotter and holier than any fire. "I would be of no help to Sam."

"There is nothing you can do. Dean, I cannot teleport. Dean, you have to do it. I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't! Take a second, think of baseball or something. You'll be fine."

The energy rippled through in some sort of tornadoing explosion that threw Dean backwards into the wall. He dashed an arm over his face, but yelped as something sizzled across his front.

The roaring light wilted and Dean cautiously uncovered his eyes, and there Cas stood, steam weeping from his collar and cuffs. His eyes were closed and his lips flattened as he tried to reign himself in. Dean pushed himself up. "See? Worked like a charm," he grimaced. His jacket and the shirt beneath it were ruined, charred patches smoking lightly. He pulled them off, ignoring the rising blisters on his stomach.

Castiel's expression of failure and grief said it all. "I believe the Archdemon opened a can of whoop-ass on me." He said, quoting Dean in his gravelly rumble. "He used ancient, angelic magic against me. The very thing I have no defense against. You must...expel me now!"

The windows rattled. A car alarm went off outside. Plaster ghosted down from the ceiling. Castiel started tremoring as his wraith fought to escape his vessel. Cas was going nuclear.

Heart breaking, Dean sliced through his arm, drawing the sigils on the wall. "Cas, just try a little harder, please. For Sam."

"I am sorry. There will be more bloodshed if I don't go now."

With agonizing dread, he slammed his palm in the middle, and collapsed as Sam's last hope was catapulted away.


	6. Chapter 6

Hi! I apologize for the delay; I never intended it go this long without posting. Between work and life and research for the end of this story, I just got delayed. The good news is the story is finished, and there will be another chapter. Thanks again for all of your support and wonderful reviews. Keep them coming!

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**Chapter 6**

Even without the uplifting prospect of hope, Dean Winchester crashed just the same. He was plunged into a state of dark indifference, despite the fact that technically his brother was still alive. Without his 6'5'' Jiminey Cricket chirping in his ear or plying him with veggies or grumbling about politics, Dean realized just how optimistic Sam kept him. There was no sign of Castiel. Garth had no leads. Everyone else they knew was dead, and somehow this felt bleaker and more dire than those violent years in Purgatory. At least he had fuglies to kill and a buddy by his side.

_"Dean, this is Li. You haven't been by in 15 hours, and you're not at the motel. Saul's gettin' worried. Sam looks better today..." _

Everything faded into an unimportant haze of black and white.

_"Mr. Singer, this is Pamela Grady from Mercy Hospital, we will need to meet with you in regard to payment for Mr. Singer's medical care." _

He wandered, both in mind and body, spirit too broken to do much else.

_"Mr. Singer, this is Dr. Nali. I have to fly to Boston on business for two days. My colleague, Dr. Hayden, will be taking over your brother's care while I am gone. We will re-assess long-term care when I return..." _

He drank. He drove the car. Though it tasted like ash, Dean ate just enough to keep him going.

_"Hi, sir, per our records, you would like updates via phone about your brother's condition. His oxygen SATs are improving and we will be removing the chest tubes this afternoon. We're also going to try to ween him off the vent. If you have any questions..."_

It had taken him thirty-nine hours to muster the courage to return to the hospital and to the ring side to Sam's agonizingly slow decline. His brother needed him, and for Dean, that would always mean everything. No matter how much pain it caused him. The ICU looked and unfortunately for his perpetually queasy stomach, smelled the same. The walls were a depressing sage green, that read more like a prison-gray. Li was sitting in the chair by Sam's bed when he entered, her basket of knitting on the floor. She was humming, her fingers a flurry of skilled movements. Li's eyes flickered up to Dean as he slinked in the doorway. "Ma'am," he greeted.

She nodded, and packed up her crafts. Whatever she was making, it was colorful and mishapen. She stood up, shouldering her bag and patted Sam's shoulder before rounding the bed. "You do what you needed to?" She asked, weary and a little angry.

"Yes ma'am."

And she instantly softened. "Alright, baby, I'll see you tomorrow. You too, Dean," she cupped his cheek like a mother would a son.

Dean offered her a loose, respectable hug. "Thanks for stayin' with him."

Regret colored her chocolate brown eyes and pulled at the lines of her dark skin. "Honey, I never should've left."

"You and me both."

With the Li gone, Dean took her chair, sat his bag under Sam's bed, and scooted it as close to the bed as the monitors would allow. He took Sam's limp arm, the only free space of skin between the IVs in his hand and the blood pressure cuff on his biceps and squeezed "All right, Sammy, this is how it's gonna go. I'm here, man, for the long haul. So you do whatever you need to do, go wherever you need to go," Dean said, his lip trembling mightily, "and I'll be right here the whole time. You're not alone, little brother."

Sam never twitched.

Dean stayed true to this word, obstinately refusing to leave even during doctor's exams. He used Sam's bathroom and only ducked out of the room for food when he couldn't charm it out of the nurses. He asked questions about his injuries, laid eyes on the horrible bruising of his broken hip, and the jagged, hideous wounds from his punctured lung and the resulting surgery. When they healed, if they healed, the scars would never fade.

Sam was extubated the next day, and Dean stayed, pressed beside the door, feeling the only tube scraping the bathroom of his own throat. After days on the vent, Sam didn't tolerate it well, wheezing and gasping, even when a special non-rebreather was added. Nurse Casy smiled at him reassuringly as Sam struggled to breathe on his own for the first time in almost four days. "I know it sounds bad, but it's just his body adjusting to the work it has to do and his lung is still healing. Give him a little time."

It took longer than Dean would have liked for Sam's guttural breaths to ease into shallow, too fast breaths, but it happened. Dean smiled, despite himself, fighting against the optimism blossomed inside. "Good job, Sam."

There was a coffee cart on the west wing of the third floor that was manned all night in deference to impatient families waiting for babies to be born. Dean looked forward to his nightly trip, a long walk to stretch his legs while Sam got a sponge bath. The glass windows of the skywalk was as close to outside and fresh air that Dean got these days, and he stopped to gaze out at the small town covered in a haze of ice and snow. It was snowing again, but lazily with fat tufts of flakes wafting down to the ground below. Dean checked his watch. He had seven minutes left to feel as morose and pitiful as he desired and he did just that, flagging against the glass. He felt brittle and impotent, and the furthest thing from the killer he'd become or the hunter he used to be. He wasn't sure what was worse, anymore, the loneliness or the fear.

When his time was up, Dean tamped down his emotions and ventured back to Sam, sipping distastefully at his coffee. The man had made it with a flourish of caramel and whipped cream, and it settled in Dean's stomach like slime.

The coffee was abandoned, splattering the tiled floor when he looked up and saw doctors and nurses trotting in and out of Sam's room. Dean picked up speed, there was no running on the ward, but he didn't care. He passed skidded into Sam's room, watching as a confounded Dr. Hayden and a team of nurses hovered over his brother, heart monitor blaring loudly. Dean froze at the threshold, his mouth dry, knees weak.

He wasn't ready.

He stared at the heart monitor, knowing enough from "Dr. Sexy, M.D." that the monitor would show a thin, steady line if the heart wasn't beating. But he saw an erratic rippled one, and numbers signaling a rapid heartbeat. LIFE. Relieved that he wasn't losing his brother at that very minute, Dean ventured into the room, moving near the far wall to watch cautiously. Something was wrong, though, Sam was dripping with sweat. His limbs moved in a non-sensical, albeit it, weakened flail. His lips were moving too, and the doctor-a man who looked young enough to be in high school, plucked the mask off, pressed an ear to his mouth, frowning. "What...what is that? It's certainly not english. Schedule a CAT scan, we need to look at his brain again. Page the attending neurologist. And call Dr. Nali in Boston."

Sam made a low whimper, and Dean's back muscles snapped taut. He knew what this was.

The quack of a doctor was still barking out orders for sedation and complicated-sounding tests. "Wait, wait...hold on on second." No one listened to him, and Dean suddenly found that thing inside of him, that feral, determined beast that had and would kill anything to protect his brother. "EVERYONE STOP FOR ONE DAMN SECOND!"

A nurse froze. The doctor looked up, startled. Dean moved to the far side of the bed, and gently worked on the mask off. He listened to Sam's scraped, raw mumblings and the second he heard he nearly cried. He replaced the mask and laid a hand over Sam's chest, to the right above the bulk of bandages and leads. He whispered a response in his ear, repeating it over and over, watching with a teary smile as Sam's taut muscles relaxed, the lines of pain and fear easing. The heart monitor slowed, the alarm cutting off. "I hear ya, Sammy. You're safe, Sammy. You got out, remember?" he said.

He glanced three incredibly stunned faces, pulling up a chair he had no plans of ever vacating.

"That wasn't gibberish, doc. That was Archaic Latin."

Dr. Hayden's eyebrows climbed.

Dean shrugged as he puffed up with pride. "My brother here is a bit of a genius; he went to Stanford. He's not having some sort of fit, so you can put that syringe away, honey," he said not bothering to even look at the sheepish nurse in the corner. "It was just a nightmare." One about being tortured in the pit, Dean knew.

"A nightmare?" He parroted again.

"He's had them for years. Since his girlfriend died."

Perversely, Dr. Hayden laughed and did a strange little two-step where he stood. "That's a very good thing."

There was an odd shift in the air from then on, Dean refused to call it hope or even optimism, but it felt like something akin to that. The nurses, and Dr. Hayden, were more attentive, more excited and more communicative. Dean listened, smiled and nodded, but held their confidence at bay, refusing to let it sink it. He merely stayed with Sam, just now accepting that their lives would never be the same. Dean was ready to take whatever of Sam was left. It was more than enough.

Dean shifted and jerked himself awake, checking the monitors and shushing Sam reflexively. They had adjusted his medications, and the nightmares seemed to happen more frequently, but it meant that Sam wasn't unconscious, he was in a heavy, recuperative sleep. He stretched his muscles, wondering if it would be overstepping to ask Li to launder his clothes. He glanced down at Sam.

And nearly fell out of his chair.

Sam's eyes, murky from the drugs and hazy with pain, stared back at him unerringly for one long, impossible moment before they rolled closed again, but Dean stood up, scarcely breathing. He slid his hand into Sam's, the one with the amulet tied to his wrist. "Sammy? Hey, can you hear me?"

It took minutes or maybe hours until Sam's eyes opened again, half-mast and wet.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean sputtered, voice breaking.

Sam grimaced as he pulled in a trembling, ragged breath, one corner of his mouth twitched in the barest of smiles.

Dean cried silently, face buried in Sam's bedsheets, and wasn't at all surprised when he felt a large hand rest on the crowd of his head, the amulet tangling in this hair.


	7. Chapter 7

**Thank you so much for all of your support. I lovelovelove this story, and I'm grateful that so many of you have stuck with it. Here we go, the last part. Believe it or not, I finished days before this week's amazing episode. Let me know what you think! **

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**Chapter 7**

Dean heard the click of high heels on tile before Dr. Nali bounded into the room, carry-on in tow. The normally buttoned-up surgeon was all bright eyes and disbelief. "He's conscious? Coherent?" She panted, her dark black hair askew, peeling off her snow-flecked coat and ridiculously girly mittens.

"Ask him yourself." Dean grinned.

Sam's head lulled in her direction and lifted three fingers of his right hand in weak wave. "Hi." His voice was frayed and barely carried.

Dr. Nali smiled. "Hello, Mr. Singer."

She grabbed his chart, flipping through the progress notes with impatience. She addressed Dean. "How's he doing? Any problems you've noticed?"

Dean was downright giddy and doing a horrible job of hiding it. "Sam, how many countries in the European Union?"

"Twenty-seven."

"Who's the President of the United States?"

"Barack Obama, second term."

"What were the three words I gave you to remember?"

Sam rolled his eyes, embarrassed.

"It's a neuro check, dude. What were the words?"

"Scrotum. Bazinga. Pie. Dr. Hayden gave me...less-crazy ones."

Dr. Nali observed him as it he had sprouted a second head. "And they were?"

"Basketball. Puppet. Marshmallow."

"I'll be damned," she whispered and began listening to his chest, checking his incisions. "I never...Sam, you are a bit miracle."

Dean leaned back in his chair with a laugh. "He's a freak of nature, ain't he?"

-SPN-

Sam's recovery would be a road longer than even Sam and Dean were used to traveling. His progress, while remarkable, was always marked with complications and strife, but neither of them cared. Sam was committed to do the work just as much as Dean was. And while his brother was different, hampered by the broken body and memories he never acknowledged having, Dean could see his Sammy in there beyond the suffering.

Dean's tongue dipped out of his mouth as he focused, moving his hand in intricate stripes of motion. He relaxed, dipping the razor in the basin of water on the tray table to rinse it clean before going in again. He swiped the blade in even strokes, ignoring the crimson spots of the skin below and the ears beside. Sam, ever the Winchester, was embarrassed. "Sam, cut it out."

"Just hurry up and finish," he grumbled.

When he was awake, the youngest Winchester idled between grumpy, sullen or anxious. Dean had taken it in stride, overjoyed that his brother was awake and taking and wasn't doomed to as existence as a stalk of broccoli. Dean sank a clean washcloth in a second basin of warm water, and wiped his chin and cheeks clean., handing Sam his aftershave. Pain had carved a good deal of Sam away, now that they were free of the scraggly beard that had grown in the last five days, his cheekbones stood out through his ashen skin, and deep lines of pain bracketed his dry lips.

"Push the button, Sam," Dean ordered fondly as he folded up the towel that was tucked beneath his chin.

With a broken pelvis, a crushed arm, a skewered lung and a body that was more battered than not, they had set Sam up with a pain pump to give him better control over it. Sam shook his head, eyes closing as he Dean tucked his nasal cannula behind his ears, adjusting it carefully. There was a lot that went unspoken between them, and as unimportant as Benny and manipulation had been when Sam was dying, now that he was better, it hung in the air like a dense fog. "Sam, um..."

"Stop," Sam snapped, low and lethal, sounding ever bit the hunter he was. "You're only sorry, because I got hurt. Just remember that what you felt while I was out...that's how you made me feel about the woman I loved, the woman who saved my life. Just remember how you felt, because that's what I had to push down every morning and every night, for a year when all I wanted to do was put a gun in my mouth and squeeze. _Don't bring it up again_."

He hesitated for half a second as Sam's heart monitor beep a little quicker, providing a soundtrack to his agitation. "I was just going to say that...while you were out I got a face-full of what you were dealin' with while I was gone. Ya know, Bobby's dead. Garth had no leads. Cas got whammied. The doctors were all tellin' me that you were..." Dean cut himself off and cleared his throat. "I couldn't deal for a few days, let alone a whole year. I get why you grabbed whatever happy you could find; I'm glad you did. And I am sorry, Sammy, I was comin' to find you to tell you that before I even knew about the hunt."

Sam's face softened a little. He hedged a quick glance. "You were?"

"Yeah. Look, I know I've been...a giant ass since I got back and you've put up with it."

"Dean," Sam interjected, "you've always been an ass." He smiled before his mouth flattened with pain.

And there he was, Dean's Sammy. The silly dork who could forgive Dean for almost anything. He laughed for the first time in what felt like months as he stealthily moved his hand to Sam's side. "I'm also your big brother, and I'm gonna protect you from everything." He depressed the button before Sam could complain and dimmed the lights so Sam could rest. "Including yourself."

The relief was instantaneous, smoothing his face free of pain and loosening the knotted tightness of his muscles. "Jerk," Sam mumbled as he drifted off.

-SPN-

Sam's eyes opened to a room with no entrance and no exit. It had been forged of smooth alabaster that he knew was bone and brimstone. The air hummed with an electric blue, pregnant with suffering and the promise of torture. It smelled the same, like eroded evil and the copper of his own blood. White-blue fire appeared and arched down, landing on his legs, singing and burning away flesh, exposing bone. Sam did more than scream, the sounds he made were feral and wild, even after the smokeless flames were smothered. A face emerged from the horrific light, a hand cupped Sam's cheek pulling his focus on from his smoldering legs to the square jaw, smooth skin and dark hair of Zadkiel.

"Our time was so short, Sam. I regret that, I do. There was so much more I wanted to tell you, I wanted to show you." His voice was lurid and mismatched from his lips, echoing in his head, the confines of the cage in disjointed static. "But who knew you had an angel in your backpocket," he sneered.

"...and that he killed you," Sam challenged.

Rage contorted his face, part of it melting off like wax to reveal the frightening flashes of the creature inside, part sulfur, part grace.

Zadkiel cursed, plunging his hand so deep inside Sam he felt the fingertips on the underside of his breastbone. Writhing, Sam moaned as Zad's face appeared above his. The hand was removed so it could stroke Sam's face, smearing blood on his forehead and cheeks. And then Zad kissed him, a chaste peck over Sam's trembling lips. "Who says he did?"

The Cage vanished in a ripple of time and Sam panted and flailed, screaming from the pain that lingered inside. He tore at the restraints on his chest and arm and turned on his side, giving in to every instinct that told him to run. Agony flared in his hip and the fire he felt before still burned.

Something touched his face and Sam threw a punch. Even if his body was broken, his spirit never would. It connected with a grunt and Sam slid back on the ground, that was softer than it had been before. The light wasn't the hellish white-blue but there was a figure hovering above, like Zad had done in the cabin and in the cage, and Sam prepared to fight again. Except this time, the face emerged from the darkness inside of folding from the light, and it was Dean, all scared eyes and bloody nose. Sam squinted and grabbed a hold of the only thing that made sense. "He's here, Dean, he's here."

He would have fallen, but Dean caught him securely with an arm around his shoulders. He nudged him back, catching his lolling head with another hand. "Shit, Sam, you're burning up."

There were alarms going off, and high-pitched droned that clamored in Sam's head. But there was still pain, especially when he breathed. "...'cause set me on fire."

"You're not making sense, Sam. No one's here. You're in the hospital, okay? I need you to stop moving around and just relax."

He saw it now-the mint green walls that he usually spent climbing. The television bolted in the corner that Dean always commandeered, like he did the motel rooms. It was annoying, but he liked that some things would never change. The monitors that bleeped and clicked. Sam frantically flung off the sheets so he could examine his legs, which weren't charred to the bone, but healthy and barely marred by the night in the cabin. He wiggled his toes, moving them the best he could. "Dean...he was here, I know he was here." he panted. The air was thick like molasses, like blood.

"Okay, okay. You gotta breathe, Sam. Eyes on me," Dean said. He turned over his shoulder and yelled, "CASEY! I NEED SOME HELP!" And then muttered to himself, "_Blood_...is that blood? Why is he bleeding?"

Sam was hyperventilating, his lungs puttering tiny little breaths. He wasn't getting enough air, and the sensation dragged him back into that house, into the pit and into his nightmares. "Dean, help me...please. I c-can't go back...can't ddo it again."

"I'm helpin', Sammy. I'm right here. You just got a rip-roarin' fever, that's all." His hand ghosted over his forehead, pushing back the sweaty hair, and it felt nothing like the malicious caress of an archdemon. He reached for something out of his line of sight but returned with a mask, pressing it over his mouth and nose. "You don't have to do anything but breathe for me, Sam, that's it."

People flooded the room, barking questions and reattaching leads. Sam knew he was out of his head, except he also knew what was real and that was the bulk of his brother holding him without hesitation or embarrassment, comforting him in full view of doctors and nurses and the Zadkiel's voice, breath hot on his neck, and lips on his mouth. He coughed beneath the mask, as his heart pumped by a freight train, beating nothing but pain through his body.

"They're going to sedate you, Sammy, but we're takin' care of you. I'm staying right here," he said loudly. He pressed his lips to his ear. "I'm armed to the teeth and the room's secure. Nothing's comin' for you. I'm here, Sam. I'm here."

-SPN-

No one knew the depths and strength of temptation and sin like Dean Winchester. He craved, lusted, and yearned for everything from a perfectly made, greasy cheeseburger to the behind-the-curtain talents of Vegas' best strippers to freedom from centuries of torture and months of non-stop combat.

At that very moment, Dean couldn't remember ever wanting to sit down in a quiet, empty room more in his life. He gripped the handrail on the skywalk as he headed to the coffee cart, wondering when the five-minute walk became the trek to Mordor, when his joints had locked up like a shy virgin on prom night.

After Sam's raging infection and minor surgery from the shard of glass that had worked its way out of right side, just above his hip, he was too fragile for Dean to think about leaving the hospital just to shower and recharge. His stomach still flipped when he thought of his brother pale and terrified, blood soaking through the sheets, a pristine triangle of glass poking its way through the skin. Dr. Nali had explained that it happened sometimes, mostly to car accident victims. Glass was embedded deep, and it was hard to see in scans, and the body had its own way of expelling it. Although the infection had set his release from the ICU back a few days, Sam was rebounding. He slept more than Dean liked, but it was when he was awake that was truly unsettling. His normally even-keeled brother was scared of what had happened in the house, of being dragged back to the cage, of every strange sound and shadow. To see his brother like that, the fierce warrior, the kid armed with facts and weapons, was far worse than any torture or unfulfilled need.

Dean stopped in the middle of the walkway and dropped until he was sitting, head pressed back against the frosted glass.

"Mr. Singer, are you all right?" Dr. Nali asked.

If Sam wasn't, he wasn't. But he offered a forced smile. "Jus' takin' a break."

"Open your eyes then," she responded.

Dean hadn't noticed they were closed. When he opened them, the overhead lighting stung, ramping up a headache he'd been ignoring for the greater part of a week. He was kind of slumped against the glass, legs sprawled out in front of him. He could see why she and the gawkers that slowed to look at him were concerned. "Can you stand?"

"Of course," Dean scoffed. Stubborn, he pushed himself up, wobbling a little as he got his knees beneath him. Before he got completely upright, his knees buckled.

Dr. Nali grabbed him by the elbow, another arm around his back. Between Dean's pride and her expertise, they both managed to keep him from falling. "Okay, Dean, nice and slow, you're gonna sit back down, okay?"

He landed on the cheap pine green carpeting that lined the walkway with little more than an uncomfortable thump. Dizziness made it hard to stay upright even with Dr. Nali's help.

"Are you lightheaded? And don't lie to me."

He liked Sam's doctor and Dean had stopped himself from connecting with common strangers as a teenager. She probably made a ridiculous chunk of change being a fancy surgeon from the city, but she managed to keep the God complex that most doctors had in check, and she genuinely cared about Sam. Dr. Nali was capable of fixing hearts and lungs and could also see through Dean's finessed bullshit. She wasn't all that bad to look at either. She was Indian, all rich brown skin and glossy black hair, which she kept cropped short. Her eyes were big and wide and Dean could tell even in the layers of baggy scrubs and oversized lab coat that she had more curves than a San Francisco street.

"A little bit, yeah."

She pressed two fingers to the base of his throat, checking his pulse, pupils and eyeing him when she noticed his hands were shaking. She dug into her pockets and pulled out a granola bar. "Despite what you may think, Dean, the human body can't survive on coffee and determination, no matter how much you want it to. You're dehydrated and your blood sugar's probably in the toilet. Eat that."

Dean stared at the jauntily packaged treat, so nauseous he tasted cooper in his mouth. Paling, he shook his head. "'M good."

The hand that folded over his forehead wasn't that of a skilled surgeon but a worried friend. "You have a fever."

The hands that palpated his glands decidedly were. "Dean, we have a problem."

"I just need a few minutes and I'll get up."

"Not, that's not it. I think you have the flu. I'm going to get a wheelchair and check you out."

That explained the ache his muscles, the chill even his new leather jacket couldn't quell and the nausea that had hampered his appetite. "Gimme some aspirin then." She sat back on her knees, dialing on her cell phone. Dean placed a hand over hers. "What aren't you saying?"

Dr. Nali sighed, her big eyes avoiding his the way they did when the only news she had was grim. "With Sam's infection, and the condition he's in...you can't see him while you're sick."

Dean's heart nearly stopped and he grappled for the railing to pull himself up out of sheer will. "I made a promise to him. I'm not leaving him in the ICU alone."

"I understand that you made a promise, but if you are sick, you could give it to him. Dean, we are in the middle of a flu epidemic, and it's killing people, _healthy people_. It's obvious how much you care for your brother, so I know you wouldn't want to jepoardize his recovery. More than that, you're dead on your feet, you've been running on fumes for days now, don't think we haven't noticed. You need to rest and eat and drink before I have to put you in a bed right beside him."

Dean stifled a cough and walked towards Sam's room. He'd survived hellfire and Purgatory and the death of two fathers. After years of decades of hunting half-hurt, Dean had a learned how to block out pain, how to muscle through a hunt just because it needed to be done. He'd learned to ignore his physical limits of his body with his mind. And he could do that now. The strange flutter, feathery flutter of his heart wasn't there. The neon chill of fever would disappear. The mind-numbing exhaustion could vanish.

He made it as far as the elevator before he flagged against the wall. Dr. Nali was waiting with a wheelchair. "I hate you." He said heatlessly.

She patted his shoulder as he sat down.

By the time he made it back to Sam's room, he was hooked up to an IV with Saul flanking his side like he was an escaped convict. He stood outside the glass, watching his brother through the parted curtains. The nasal cannula was back as was the sharp, painful way he breathed. He knocked on the glass and winced when Sam started violently, head jerking towards the door. He smiled and pointed to the phone as he dialed on his cell. A nurse in the room handed him the receiver. Sam frowned and pressed it to his ear. "Dean, what's going on? You can come in."

"Uh, shit, Sammy," Dean rubbed his forehead. In the darkened glass, he could see just how awful he looked, from the the sunken eyes to his mussed hair. "You wanna know somethin' funny? I got sick in the place that's supposed to make you better."

Sam's eyebrows climbed. "You okay?"

"I don't have a broken pelvis or anything so don't worry about me stealing your thunder, dude. I caught the flu...and with your immune system...they won't let me see you 'til I'm better."

His brother scooted up further in the bed and squinted towards the window. His expression washed out, and Dean knew that it was Sam knitting himself together because he had too. "It's okay, Dean, I'll be fine for a few days. I jus' sleep anyways."

"We don't exactly have the best track record when we split up, man. I made a promise to you that I'd stay and after everything, Sammy, I can't break it."

"I'm okay if you're okay." Sam smiled just a bit and his eyes flickered off to his right to the empty space just beyond the bed. "Well maybe there's an angel on my shoulder," he said pointedly.

The air rippled in the space and gleamed were Sam had been looking and Dean nearly leapt with joy. And he instantly recognized it as Cas' mojo. "This angel you speak off...what's he look like?"

"Wings are a little frayed, but he's good."

-SPN-

Living on the road, Dean lived an economical life. He also lived one that was free of sentimentality for both practical and personal reasons. There was only so much room in the trunk of the Impala, and keepsakes only meant attachments that their nomadic, violent life didn't have room for. It was one of Dean's first survival mechanisms, and after decades of heartache, Sam's last.

But now, more than ever, Dean wished he had a camera, so he could relive this moment again and again, maybe even make his new screen saver.

Because Sam was walking. It was more of a slow, arduous shuffle with Dean taking more of Sam's considerably lessened weight, but he was grateful to be dwarfed by his beanpole of a brother again.

Casey, Sam and Dean's favorite nurse, approached them both her trademark bubbly laugh and snapped a picture with her iPhone. "We guessed you were tall, but we didn't know you were this tall, Sam."

He grinned, a little sweaty from the twelve steps out the door, basking in the attention for once now that it was based in positivity and not due to another setback. "Dean hates that I'm taller than him."

Dean smiled reflexively at the flash of Sam's dimples. "You're not that much taller than me, Sasquatch. And be nice to your crutch."

Sam ignored him, and shot Casey a patented puppy-eyed expression that had her melting like butter on hot bread. "When do you think I can get out of here?"

Casey backpedaled, literally, steering a tiring Sam back towards his room. "I think we're looking at another few days. You're making great process, though. We're just being annoyingly cautious with our miracle patient."

Dean didn't miss the slump of Sam's shoulders as he headed back to his room.

-SPN-

Dean idled on being sneaky, it was when he was being forthcoming and honest that he felt truly naked and vulnerable. So when he slipped by the nurse's desk, plying the night nurse with a dozen donuts to distract her from the wheelchair he snagged from the orderlies' station. Sam was sleeping when he entered the room, and Dean was hit with how few monitors he wore now that he was in a regular room. There was only an IV for medications now, and the leads for the heart monitor that hadn't been reattached after his thrice daily walks. Sam woke up slowly, parting from dreams like a civilian, not snapping alert like a hunter, and it only reassured Dean of the decision he'd spent the past month mulling and agonizing over.

"What's goin' on?"

Dean dug some warm clothes of the bag, and put them on Sam's bed. "Put those on, we're..."

Sam scrambled for the clothes, oozing relief. "Finally, I was wondering when you were going to break me out. Have there been any leads on the Archdemons?"

Dean shook his head. "We are leavin', because I half-expect you find you on the ceiling you've been climbin' the walls so bad, but we're comin' back."

"I'll take it," Sam said, awkwardly pulling off his hospital gown one-handedly.

It was a beautiful night, warm enough that Sam wouldn't be cold or his breathing hampered, but one where the sky was clear, the stars gleamed and the snow sparkled. Dean just drove, contented that his brother was beside him, his pain more than controlled, with no doctors or nurses popping in every five minutes to prod and poke.

They didn't speak but the silence was companionable and comfortable. Dean thought of the past few days, the medical bills piling up so high that even the chunk of change Bobby had left them wouldn't cover. The thought of stiffing the doctors who fought against nature and science to save his brother made him a little ill, and for once Dean was determined to do the right thing, no matter how much it cost.

He parked at the top of a hill just off of the small town's main street. "I've been doin' a lot of thinkin' while you were in the hospital, while I was racing to get to you from Californina," Dean began, "about what's next for me and for you, and..."

"What do you mean?" Sam interrupted. "Dean, I'm gonna get better and then we're going to hunt like we always do."

Dean clenched his jaw. "Just let me get this out."

"Yeah, go for it."

"I feel like...I've been torn my whole life-between what's best for you and what's best for other people. Ya know, it's always been 'look out for Sammy' and 'nothing is more important for the hunt', and those two things have been at war for as long as I can remember. There are some battles I'm willing to lose, Sam, and the one for you isn't one of them." Dean ticked the heat up higher when Sam shivered and looked out at the strangely modern building a few feet away. "I don't want to hunt anymore. I don't think I can, actually."

Sam sputtered beside him so badly Dean thought he'd need oxygen again. "Dean, come on, I'm going to be fine."

"No, Dr. Nali say your left lung is at 93% capacity and you could need a lobectomy before you're 40. I heard your ortho say you need at least two more surgeries on your arm."

"That was last week, my lung is better," he took a deep breath to prove his point.

"I don't care if you grow an extra lung and gills. How close you came, all that pain that you went through, _I don't care_." Dean paused and blinked to clear his eyes. "I get why you stopped when you thought I was gone. I understand it now more than ever. I...I thought I lost you...and for what? We're not the only hunters in the world...and we've racked up a lot of saves, somewhere around seven billion mark. Jordan knew when to hang it up, and I do too."

"If you think I'm not going to get better, I will...Dean..."

"I don't think you're weak, Sammy, you're the strongest person I know. I just...I'm done risking my life for evil that's determined to put our heads on a spit, that's all. You see that building over there? The one with the blue door?"

"Yeah..."

"I rented it, today. It's ours for the next two years. We're going to get you better and then we're going to see the Grand Canyon, and we're going to a Stones concert, and we're gonna go to a baseball game and beer festivals, and there's a university thirty miles away, a good one, maybe you can enroll."

"Dean, what about the tablet, what about closing the gates of hell forever?"

Dean shrugged. "Garth's on it. He put some good hunters on the case and we're gonna help, but we're staying out of it."

"And what if the evil comes to us?"

He gripped the steering wheel tighter. "Then we'll make those evil sons-a-bitches regret even darkening our doorstep." He paused for a moment, "I need you, Sammy. I need you to be my brother, my wingman, and I need you to show me how to live without the hunt," Dean confessed. "Because I don't know how."

"If that's what you really want, of course I can. At least until I get better."

"Sam..."

"I know you don't believe me, but Dean, I know what I saw, I know what I felt. Zad's not dead. And I'm not sure I can just...stop knowing that thing is out there."

"Cas said he smoked him."

Sam huffed, affronted. "Cas got whammied himself. Stranger things have happened."

Dean turned to look at his brother, knowing that Sammy, the great dissembler, couldn't really lie to Dean anymore. "Do you want to keep going? After all of this? After hitting the finishline only to have the damn marathon start all over again? Do you really want to do this?"

Sam went still, head swiveling to gaze at the squat brick building with a blue door. It hadn't been plowed, and the steps were covered in dirty, brown snow. His eyes filled, and he shook his head. "No, I don't."

**EPILOGUE**

Life went on, in some maddeningly strange way. Sam's ribs and lung healed, and he busied himself with fixing up their home that used to be an old firehouse. Li got Dean a job at a local bar. They paid their bills, made friends and lived regular. And when they couldn't stand it anymore, they drove, far and fast and free.

"Sammy, don't forget, we're having dinner with Saul tonight at the bar!" Dean barked as he stuttered down the stairs, late as usual. "And take your medication!"

"You're worse than a wife; GO TO WORK!"

Dean chuckled, happy to hear Sammy's hysterical, booming voice rattle the bricks of their little home. He stumbled out into the slush and fog of March, putting his keys in his mouth so he could awkwardly shrug into his jacket. He stopped at the theshold, keys plummeting from his mouth that slackened in shock. On their humorous "Go Away" mat, in the middle of their unshoveled porch laid an twisted black metal bar, the once-dried blood that stained it painting the gray snow.


End file.
